This blog details my adventures in being a mom, and trying to find a balance with my family, my career and my love of running!

As I mentioned before I’m doing a challenge called “Beat the Winter Blahs” to keep myself focused when it’s not the nicest weather outside and I feel a little bit stir crazy and next week we’re supposed to examine how we’ve changed since the first week, and honestly I haven’t really changed that much. I don’t want to sound cocky, but I didn’t need to. I made a resolution at the end of December to smarten up and really put the effort in, and I have, which is why the scale has been going down now for 8 weeks in a row. This challenge was more about having fun and seeing what I could do to keep inspiring myself. I do all the challenges and track my numbers and minutes of activity but honestly, if I find at the end of 6 weeks that I’m in the top three, I plan to ask the girl in charge to fudge the numbers so I don’t win if I do. I’d like to know I won, but someone else should get the prize. I don’t need prizes or rewards for losing the weight and being successful. Getting healthy IS my reward. I feel better when I eat healthy food, I am less moody when I work out, I sleep better knowing I’ll be around longer for my daughters and have more time with Steve. I’ve done the reward thing and it just doesn’t cut it for me. I set money aside not to bribe myself with clothes when I’m done, but because I work as a professional and I can’t wear my size 16/pregnancy wardrobe when I’m back to a size 8. I don’t care what brands I wear and honestly most will come from value village since I’d rather put the money away for my girls than spoil myself. What I will indulge in is a few nice bras, some new undies, a cute new running outfit or two, and probably a few pairs of shoes or boots. I’ve always wanted a nice pair of boots but could never get my calves in them. Maybe soon. Oh and a trench coat. I don’t know why but I’ve always wanted one! I blame my love of the x-files.

But I’ve rambled off topic, again. What I decided to do as a way to beat the winter blahs was to provide myself a visual for how well I’m doing. I stole this idea from Meg over at Grande Skinny Latte, (who by the way has a SUPER awesome blog that I read all the time and just LOVE – Meg you’re the best!) and have given it my own spin. So Meg has a jar that is full of marbles. In fact there is 1 marble for every 0.1lbs she wants to lose. So when she has her weekly weigh in, she takes the number of marbles out that she lost. I think this is BRILLIANT! Whenever I run on the treadmill or outside I am always doing the math of how much I’ve completed (percentage wise) and I’m pretty sure everyone who reads my blog has figured out I love my statistics (aren’t you proud Cecilia?) and factual numbers, so I made my own jar. The differences are, my scale only measures in 0.2lbs (so a 1/5 not a 1/10th of a pound) so I have fewer beads. I also used glass beads not marbles, since they were left over from our wedding decor (yes I have wedding crap from 5 years ago hanging around – don’t tell Steve). I also, have set up a second jar to see how far I’ve made it. My jar goes from 165 down to 145 (with a back up jar of beads from 145-140 if I’m not feeling it at 145) so I can watch the ‘to lose’ jar shrink and the ‘gone’ jar grow. Funny, I never thought I’d be excited to watch something grow while trying to lose weight! (ba-bump-ching)

Those 3 little beads in the right jar won’t be lonely for long!

Okay, finally the Winter Blahs part? No this wasn’t some project specifically, but they had us create a wallet card in week 1, and since I never leave the house except to buy groceries, I substituted that for a fridge card, but honestly I don’t even see it on the fridge anymore. I figured these in my bedroom are pretty and more to the point and in my face as a fun reminder. Plus, they are sparkly blue because our wedding theme was a winter wonderland! So not only am I getting rid of symbolic weight, but I’m tossing my own symbol of winter away with them. Okay maybe that’s stretching it but I have an English degree and I declare it acceptable!